Hippies in Space

"Take a picture, little bro. This is where we'll officially sell our first burger!" Randy excitedly pointed out the front window of our ship.

I stared down at the lush green, brown, and blue planet that we orbited. "Where even are we?"

He casually leaned back in the driver's seat and rested his feet on the dashboard. "No clue. I just punched in some random coordinates on the space GPS and this is where it brought us."

I snapped my head in his direction. "Wait, what!? You said earlier that we were headed to a 'prime location'."

"Yeah and there it is." He pointed back at the planet.

"But we know nothing about this place. If we just took a moment to do a little market research, we could have found an optimal spot to-."

He flippantly waived his hand around in the air as he cut me off. "When you have a burger as good as ours, you don't need boring stuff like 'market research' or 'optimal spots'. I say, if we cook it, they will come!"

I shook my head and let out a sigh, "That doesn't make sense. If nobody knows our company exists, how would they know to show up in the first place?"

"Just watch and learn. I'll show you how real business is done." Leaning back up in his seat, he grabbed the wheel and began revving the engine.

Once again it was pointless to argue with him. Like a stubborn honey badger, he was just going to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to do it and he didn't care what anyone thought.

He began to pilot us toward the planet, when...

"Uh-oh, that's not good." He muttered.

"What's not good?" I responded.

He fastened his seat belt and clenched the steering wheel. "I'd probably grab onto something. The shifter is stuck in neutral, so it looks like gravity is going to take us to the surface."

"Wait, are we going to cra-." I didn't even have time to equip my bicycle helmet, as our ship suddenly began to violently shake, smacking me against nearly every piece of cooking equipment in the cargo bay.

Sure enough, we were being dragged toward the planet's surface. Attempting to try and guide us down, Randy cranked the wheel back and forth with all his might. There was a loud scraping noise as our ship slid across a rocky clearing, digging into the ground. By some stroke of luck, we stopped just a few feet from tumbling over a cliff.

Despite being battered and bruised, I let out a sigh of relief, as I laid face up on the floor of the ship. For probably the third or fourth time this week, I legitimately thought I was going to die.

"Good news, It looks like that impact unstuck the shifter, but the bad news is the front of our ship is buried." He didn't seem all that shaken, despite nearly killing us. In fact, he was totally calm.

Assessing the damage from outside, it seemed that by some miracle there was no damage to the ship. Even if it managed to get dented or scratched, there'd be no way to tell, since it was already a rust bucket. At the very least though, it was a durable rust bucket.

Randy put his hands on his hips. "Darn, it's going to take forever to unbury this thing."

I groaned as I dragged my feet. "We should start now before it gets dark. I don't like the looks of that jungle over there."

Surrounding the cliff we were perched on was a vast sprawling rainforest. There was no telling what sorts of dangerous creatures inhabited this planet and in our current situation, we were completely vulnerable.

With our hands, we began scooping loose gravel and dumping it to the side. At the rate we were going it could take days.

Randy noticed me moping. "Don't get down, little bro. I bet you any second, our first customers will come walking out of that jun-."

A set of rustling bushes suddenly interrupted him. Assuming the worst, I jumped over and hid behind the dirt pile. I peaked the top of my head over while Randy stood his ground, unafraid.

Two figures suddenly emerged from a set of bushes. The first was a six foot tall anthropomorphic piece of broccoli that wore a tie dye T-shirt and rose tinted shades. The second was a head of lettuce with a set of arms and legs sticking out of it. It had a set of feminine looking eyes and lips. The brown headband with a peace sign on it that it wore, held its leaves back, forming what resembled hair.

"Heeey, Maaaaan. You souls look like you could use some help." The Broccoli said in a nasally male voice.

"If you're offering, that would be appreciated, Broccoli bro." Randy responded.

"Far out. We can totally have you guys out in no time." The lettuce spoke in a high pitched female voice.

Randy waived for me to come out from behind the pile. "I'm Randy the owner of this fine vessel and this is my little bro, Ralphy."

The Broccoli man smiled. "Groovy, I'm Broc Lee and this is my soul sister, Letty."

I whispered to my brother, "Are you sure we should trust a couple of random strangers?"

He muttered back, "Of course. They're just a couple of friendly hippies. People like that wouldn't hurt a fly. Just don't take any weird mushrooms if they offer them to you."

The two of them did seem harmless enough. Maybe I was just a little defensive after all the crazy stuff that's happened these past several days.

🍔🍔🍔

"Dang, you veggie bros, are work horses." Randy praised them.

For the past several hours, the hippie vegetable people worked diligently with us, as we dug out our ship one scoop at a time. If it wasn't for them, we'd have been stuck for days.

"No worries maaaan. We're always happy to help a soul in need." Broc Lee humbly nodded.

"Peace and love. Am I right, friends?" Letty felt the need to add.

There was still something weird about these two that I couldn't put my finger on. Something about their overly positive, carefree demeanors rubbed me the wrong way.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" I spoke up.

"What's on your mind, groovy little man?" Letty responded.

I turned toward the brush from where they had emerged. "Why are the both of you out in a secluded jungle like this? I doubt there's any cities or towns anywhere near here."

Broc Lee pointed down towards the jungle below the cliff we were sitting on. "Not true, maaaan. We live just down there with a bunch of other peace loving brothers and sisters. We saw an object fall from the sky and we rushed over to investigate. That's when we discovered you two groovy friends."

Randy suddenly got an intrigued look on his face. "You mean there's more of you veggie bros?"

Letty nodded her head/body up and down. "Of course, there's dozens of other free spirits like us who live out here. In fact, we're having our weekly potluck tonight. You should come join us."

The business gears in Randy's head were definitely turning. "A potluck, more like you're 'in' luck. We just so happen to run the greatest burger truck in the galaxy! We'd be happy to come."

Broc Lee and Letty turned to each other, confused. "What's a burger?" They spoke simultaneously.

Randy got an excited grin across his face and chuckled. "You veggie bros are going to be in for a treat tonight!"

After getting directions to where this event was being held, we saw Broc Lee and Letty off. As soon as they were out of our sight, my brother eagerly turned to me. "Well, it looks like I better get cooking. We got hungry vegetable people to feed."

"Wait, you're not just going to give away our food for free, are you?"

He proceeded to flip open our ship's newly installed service window. "Think of it as giving away samples. Once this hippie commune gets a taste, they'll keep coming back for more."

"I'm not so sure about these vegetable hippies. Something about them seems off to me." I objected.

He brushed me off and went into the cargo bay of the ship, where he fired up the grill. "Those hippies are about to be our first customers. We need to make a good impression."

He tossed a few cloned patties on to the grill and began flipping them with his trusty spatula. The smell of fried food filled the air. It was just a couple hours until the gathering and my brother was hard at work to crank out as many burgers as he could before then.